POSTCOLONIAL GHOSTS From Shakespeare to the Gothic novel to Salman Rushdie, the ghosthas always been a recurrent figure in literature. This conferenceaims at examining haunting phenomena in the postcolonial world: isthere a specifically postcolonial kind of haunting? Who/What are thepostcolonial ghosts? How do they show themselves? Can they beconjured or exorcised? How? To answer these questions, and manyothers, the presence of ghosts in the new literatures in English(Africa, India, Caribbean) can be examined; issues tackled mayinclude magic realism, neo-gothic writings, folklore, ghosts (guiltyor innocent), and the various ways in which they manifest themselves.Ghosts may also be more abstract : haunted texts, literary orcultural ghosts from the past.Writers as diverse as André Brink, Edwige Danticat, Fred D'Aguiar,Denise Harris, Wilson Harris, Nalo Hopkinson, Margaret Laurence,Arundhati Roy or Wole Soyinka, to quote only a few, can be looked at.Another possible aspect is the presence of colonial "ghosts" ininstitutions, politics, historiography, education, museums. Thevarious "truth and reconciliation commissions" established to dealwith – exorcise? – the ghosts of the past may also be looked at. Manyother examples can of course be dealt with.Finally, linguistic ghosts also haunt the postcolonial world :accents, creolization, "englishes" where the colonisers' language ishaunted by the colonised's (and vice versa), etc. It will thereforebe interesting to try and understand how, and to what extent,postcolonial language(s) is/are haunted.This conference should then be open to those who deal in literature,as well as to those interested in cultures, history, techniques orlinguistics, in the British Empire and the Commonwealth, deliveringtheir paper in English or French.Please send your proposals (title + abstract of 250 to 300 words) aswell as a short bio to Mélanie Joseph-Vilain <melanie.joseph-vilain_at_wanadoo.fr> and to Judith Misrahi-Barak <judith.misrahi-barak_at_univ-montp3.fr> by December 31, 2006.